Sega to cease Dreamcast production in March

Breaking news, folks. This will come as no surprise to many but Sega has officially announced that it will stop producing the Dreamcast console in March. However, Sega is planning on releasing 70 Dreamcast titles (software) from April 2001 to March 2002. This is phase 2 of their plan to become a "contents provider." Aside from the DC, Sega will be making 3 games for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance (among them Sonic the Hedgehog Advance) and 5 titles for Sony's PlayStation 2 (including Virtua Fighter 4). By letting third party makers manufacture the hardware, the Dreamcast architecture will live on in the PC and as a set-top box, allowing Sega to concentrate their efforts developing software as a contents-based company.

Update: A Windows Media stream of this announcement is available here. It is in Japanese and is about an hour long.